Quintessence
by Disciple Of The Dragon Star
Summary: A collection of long-ish drabbles about the words spoken in silence between two hearts. Angsty. Maybe dark even. Not so much fluff. YuseiAki - Faithshipping. Chapter 5 : Insubstantial - It's always hard to lose a piece of your former life.
1. Puzzle

Aki still doesn't understand.

She doesn't understand the strange restlessness or the autopilot route her feet take to this place if she has nothing to do.

She cannot understand what draws her to this man like a moth is drawn to a leaping flame.

Whatever the reason, it is a pretty good one if it draws her to his garage almost four days a week under the pretext of physics tutoring.

She watches him carefully.

His hands are moving, pale brown and lightly scarred with minute records of his mechanic lifestyle. They are not particularly clean either - she spots a grease smear on the back of one finger, and the light discolouration on the skin where he attempted to wipe off the smear. But despite this, his hands are elegant and well shaped, long and delicate with strong bones and precise and flowing movements. Those expert fingers guide the pen on the page, leaving a smooth trail of black ink in numbers, equations and symbols. A minute fraction of his intelligence quantified.

Her eyes shift to his face. Forehead furrowed, deep, depthless blue eyes darkened in concentration, lips moving in an explanation she chooses not to hear. Not now. This particular explanation is not what she wants to hear.

What she wants to know is why?

Why?

Why does she lie?

Why does she so desperately want attention from him?

Why does she watch him so carefully?

Why does she wake up night after night with the fading afterimage of his smile in her mind?

A sudden stirring in her heart whispers the ghost of an answer but like she has to his explanation, Aki closes the doors of her mind to it. She deafens herself to it's soft call. She cannot accept that revelation. Not now, not here.

Curiosity, yes. It is the only notion she is prepared to entertain. Yes she wants to know more. She wants to understand this enigmatic man. But there is something else...always something more.

A wave of helplessness overcomes her as she continues to watch him. Though the room is bathed in sunlight shining in through the topmost windows he appears to shine brightest of all.

The light of a pure unwavering star.

And then those startlingly multihued eyes flick to hers.

"Do you understand now?"

His deep, husky, and melodiously modulated voice abruptly interrupts her reverie. Aki suddenly realises that she has been staring hungrily at his face. Studying it. Relishing it. Her eyes are open, unguarded.

Perhaps, she thinks, he has seen. His small, bright smile dims and his eyes darken to a probing intensity. He may have glimpsed the whirling shadows behind the rich amber of her eyes. Defenseless, her mind lay open to him, a mixture of confusion and dark thoughts that her mind refuses to acknowledge. The moment passes.

As gradually as Aki let those barriers down, she resurrects them with speed. Hiding the dark recesses of her inner world from those probing cerulean lances.

"Oh,I see now!" she exclaims with a bright smile. "Thanks!"

"No problem." he answers, his eyes returning to their normal state as well.

Aki wonders what he would say if he knew that she had solved that problem over a week ago.

The more pressing problem, she ruefully thinks, is him. He is a multifaceted enigma this man. No matter how many pieces of the puzzle she gathered, the bigger the picture grows. And the more the pieces refused to fit together.

It was a pity that physics couldn't explain this one problem she had.

I Am Back! And with my favourite pairing too! Hell I can't believe 5D's is over. D': So? Ideas? Please please leave me a prompt or a quote or anything and i will gladly oblige you with a chapter. Constructive criticism is welcome. Flames aren't. I do not own 5D's. 


	2. Storm

Chapter 2 : Storm

Yeah! New chapter! Thank you to everyone who favourited and put alerts on this story, it means so much to poor fanfic writers like myself...I just wanted to reiterate, if you want something edited or you would like to prompt a drabble LEAVE A REVIEW (yes I am quite shameless T.T) And don't forget to point out anything I should improve on! Thanks! I don't own Yu-Gi-Oh!5D's.

Yusei is often credited with recognising things that seem to be beyond other people.

While people choose to open up willingly to him, Yusei often gleans far more from observing them in silence rather than talking with them. He watches. He studies. And he listens. And sometimes he knows better what people will do before they themselves realise it.

He surreptitously glances at her. She is sitting in the corner of the room, legs folded and head bent over a novel she said she had borrowed from the library. Sitting like she is, right under the muted grey light through the window, she is sillhouetted in a light pink iridescence due to the reflection off her red trenchcoat. Outside, the weather is stormy - grey thunderclouds piled like bundles of wet wool in the sky. Lightning rips through them as he watches.

Yusei sighs and bends his head back to the D-Wheel schematic he is working on. He must correct the engine lag before the other two come home.

As he muses over the paper, he nearly misses the slight tingling feeling in his neck and back, rising to his skull.

Eventually the feeling strengthens, the sensation heightened almost to a itching feeling. He irritably scratches his neck and then on a whim looks up.

She is staring at him.

Twin amber flames are burning across the room and into his face. She is silent, ominously so, face twisted in a subtle expression of an unidentifiable emotion. Her rich burgundy hair is falling gently across her face and framing her features as Yusei locks eyes with her. He discerns something in that burning look. Some dark desire lingering behind those normally cheerful orbs. In the dark light she looks almost malevolent - almost hungry. She is laid bare as she rarely is, soul naked and raw, free of the normal façade.

Thunder rumbles. Lighting breaks in jagged forks across the purple mottled grey sky. Then as though it were a signal, the clouds begin to move away and the sunlight breaks through.

And as always, a veil descends to mask those emotions. Hiding the shadowy storm in her eyes from view.

"Can I have something to drink?" she asks with an innocent smile. "I'm thirsty."

He blinks at the sudden change in her.

"Sure."

And as Yusei leads her towards the kitchen he knows that just as this isn't the first time he has caught her watching him like that, it won't be the last. The storm, even though it has dissipated now, will return.

And with a not-unpleasant thrill running through his body, he wonders what he will do when he finally gets trapped in it.

So? How was it? Please read and review if you like it. I love writing about the darker side of Aki and obssessive love...any scenes that YOU guys want to see? 


	3. Outcast

Chapter 3 : Outcast

So here is chapter 3 and beware people, this is gonna get quite ugly. So if you don't like darkness, and angst I suggest you look away. Thank you to the people who reviewed and put favourites and alerts on this story. A very special thanks goes to "TheRoseShadow21" who gave me the quote that was the inspiration for this chapter. You rock! \m/(^_^)\m/ I do not own YGO 5D's.

"Isn't it fine to say that we are loved?

To be bound, so the world may never but touch

Isn't this, too, just fate, and nothing more?"

It was dark. Darker than anything she had seen before. The darkness engulfed her, swallowed her, extinguishing hope and dreams.

And then she heard the sobbing.

Steady and persistent, it came and went along with another slghtly familiar voice which soothed whoever it was that was in such a distressed state.

The darkness seemed to lift and lighten in general degrees. Aki looked around in a sort of detached curiosity. Grey, she thought. Grey walls, grey ground. A firmament of nothingness.

Three shadowy figures were struggling feebly in the distance in front of her.

As her mind struggled to grasp what was going on, she began to slowly process what she saw.

Rua. Ruka. And...Yusei. They were straggling wearily across the monotone landscape, the older man with his hands on either twin's shoulder. Ruka was clutching her arm, a terrified look on her face and a twitchy nervous gait. Rua himself showed no emotion, but Aki saw with a shudder of horror that his eyes were hollow and empty like turquiose empty tunnels.

And with a stab of pain and worry, she saw that Yusei was bleeding steadily from his forehead and limping slightly, in obvious pain but also in obvious defiance of whatever horror they had escaped. She stretched out a hand, to reach them, to comfort them, to help them...

"Wait!"

They stopped, the miserable procession across that grey landscape and they turned.

It should have struck her then, why Ruka let out a pathetic mewl and hid behind Yusei's figure, why Yusei hurried both of the twin's behind him and stood in front of them, protectively, defiantly.

It should have been obvious what he was protecting them against.

"Yusei!" Aki called out desperately. Her movements were sluggish and distorted as though underwater as she attempts to move towards them. "Wait! What's wrong? Why are you hurt?"

His eyes burn with a blue fire she has seen before - it is defiance.

"Stay away," he orders harshly.

Time stops. Aki ceases her struggle and stares.

"What?" she whispers. "Yusei...it's me...it's me Aki...your nakama...remember?"

Yusei looks at her with scorn. Ruka whimpers and hides herself even further behind him as her eyes shine with liquid fear.

"Nakama?" he snorts, disgust clear in his tone. "What nakama would do this to their own Aki?" Pain flares in her heart and a sudden terrible fear.

"It was you. You hurt us Aki. You can't control yourself...you love those dark desires don't you? You like the screams, the pain," Rua says in a dead voice.

Yusei looks at her, and it is not those shining star filled galaxies in blue orbs that Aki sees but a victim.

More accurately, all the victims she has hurt. The pain, the fear, the sudden realisation of how Death is breathing down their necks - how many times has she seen that look?

How many times she has relished it...

"I can't hurt you." She attempts to feebly deny the truth. "I love you...I love you all! I love you...Yusei...

"He laughs, bitter and mocking and it echoes around this empty vault of grey nothingness.

"You don't know what love is Aki. You never did. And you will never escape from your past...never..."

His voice multiplies and evolves into jarring screams and echoing cries for mercy. Cries that she has heard and ignored from all the victims and people she hurt.

"You think I didn't know? I didn't know all the dirty, lustful things you think of doing to me? That isn't love. I don't love you Aki. Nobody does. Who can love a monster?"

And then the darkness erupts into bloody red and flaming orange, the colours of detruction and it is silent except for the sound of her heart shattering.

She wakes up with a start. Panting and heaving, her breath escapes her as though it is eager to leave such a tainted person. She is still curled up in a little ball of pain and fear like in her dreams.

Aki looks at her hands and sees them, not as beautiful and elegantly shaped, but stained and covered with blood.

"You don't know what love is."

She flinches.

"I don't love you."

A tear drips down her face and into the pillow.

"Monster..."

A silent scream breaks from her open mouth and it is filled with an unheard anguish. It is his voice, and she cannot bear to be called that. Not by him.

She realises though that he is right. No matter how much he talked about bonds and fate, she was forever going to be bound to that wretched alter ego.

She is afraid.

She is afraid of how one day, her friends, her bonds, her nakama...how they will leave. How they too will jeer and laugh and ostracise her. How they too will look upon her with fear and disgust...

Because it is her fate, she knows it. Everyone she was supposed to be close with, she has hurt. And they in turn have cast her out of their lives and their hearts. It is like she is present on the earth but is unable to connect with it. A little bubble of her own.

And she cannot explain that no matter how much Yusei talks about how this dragon mark binds them together, it also binds her to the bloodstained shadows of her past.

An outcast. The stranger. The Witch.

And the insecure, vulnerable girl who cries and screams silently in the darkness of her pale room.

I did warn you didn't I? :P So anyway if you think I need to change or improve anything please do tell me BUT NO FLAMES! Just constrictive criticism would be welcome. Loved it? Just leave a review or a prompt! Reviews are especially welcome... 


	4. Here and Now

Chapter 4 : Here and Now

Just a little note before the actual story. This was inspired by TheRoseShadow21's quote (read below!) and it is my interpretation of how Yusei and Aki's relationship would have been if they had actually confessed before the WRGP. Thank you and lots of cookehs to those who reviewed, put alerts and favourited! I do not own 5D's.

"But now, we are here, we are now, and those other times are running elsewhere."

This calculation was difficult even by Yusei standards. Not that he generally considered his obvious intellectual superiority and used it to lord over other people, but even for him - this problem was just hard to solve.

He erases the numbers and formulae on the chart sheet for what feels like the thousandth time that morning and sighs, palms pressed against the table on either side of the paper. A complicated diagram of his D-Wheel engine is drawn in fine, neat pencil lines and beautifully shaded but Yusei is in no mood to appreciate art.

Temporarily he decides to rest his frazzled brain and instead, his eyes wander around the Poppo Time garage randomly. Or at least that is what he tells himself it is, as his eyes come to rest on the now familiar figure on the sofa.

She is lying down, knees drawn up and one arm hanging slightly over the edge of the sofa, staring through the open window. The sunlight falls on her face and hair and the open, vulnerably thoughtful look on her face. Yusei smiles gently, a quirking of his normally flatlined lips.

He hasn't had much time to spend with her recently. Shopping for parts, Crow and Jack's constant bickering, playing with the twins and co. - it hardly leaves him with any time alone with her. Surprisingly, he has found that she will wait, she will wait and wait until those precious few moments where they can ignore the world and focus on their late consummated relationship.

Moments that are too few.

He brings a hand up to cup his face and stares in silent amusement and a strange awe. Yusei has never seen a woman so blind to herself. Sure he's had women throwing themselves at him, but they were confident in their bodies, in themselves.

Using it, flaunting it.

But as Yusei stares at her, as he watches the way the light seems to soak into the creamy lustre of her skin, as he watches the hazel eyes shift from brown to amber to liquid gold, as he observes in silent appreciation, the rich burgundy and tinted vermilion in her falling locks of hair, he sees that she is beautiful beyond anyone and anything he has seen. And he doesn't know why she is blind to it.

But in her innocent beauty, in her absolutely unintentional flaunting, she is more sensuous and sultry than anyone Jack could pick up at a party.

Perhaps it is the stigma of being the Black Rose Witch. After all, being screamed at in hatred by thousands of people didn't do self-confidence any good. But she still believes that people hate her. And though she never says it, he knows that her patience, her slight clinginess and her attempts to stay close to him stem in part from the fear that he too will one day hate and despise her. To fear her as the Witch. To leave and find solace in the arms of other women.

When will she realise that he doesn't care?

When will she realise that he has seen the woman behind the façade of fear and hatred and loved her?

When would she realise that he would sooner tear his heart out, give up his life than to lose her forever?

Yusei stands, gently, so as not to startle her and puts down the pencil. Corrections and schematics be damned. They could wait.

Slowly, he settles himself down on the floor beside the sofa and next to hasn't noticed, she doesn't move. Yusei chuckles softly at her, noting the dreamy expression in those amber orbs.

Slowly, he inches his hand into the one hanging off the edge and savours the smooth creamy skin slipping into his own rough brown fingers like silk-

He takes it slow. Even something as simple as holding her hand. He wants to love every moment he spend with this woman. He wants to remember, to dream about it later. Before something happens to reluctantly tear him away.

So as her hand timidly tightens in his own larger one, as the sunlight burnishes both their skins and her eyes turn towards him, as her face is lightly tinted red, he smiles. There is no need for words.

Because here and now...is the time to feel.

FLUFFY. Well fluffier than usual for me anyway. To be honest I am not entirely happy with this chapter. So if you agree then please leave constructive criticism and NO FLAMING. Please. Reviews are appreciated...(^_^) 


	5. Insubstantial

Chapter 5 : Insubstantial

Wow...had a bit of writer's block so I'm not sure if this came out the way I wanted it to...Meh. Whatever. This is an alternate ending to the duel between Misty and Aki. Heartfelt thanks to you Faithshippers who reviewed and put alerts on this story! And an especial thanks to TheRoseShadow21 without whom this chapter possibly wouldn't have made it past the writers block. O.o. I don't own YGO 5D's. If I did this scene would have made it into the show. :D

"My knees give way with the relief of knowing I have not faded away after all."

There is a feeling that comes when something vanishes from life. It feels like a part of you is ripped from the very marrow of your soul and dies there and then.

Divine was dead.

The Dark Signer Misty had been defeated and they were supposedly a step closer to defeating the others but it didn't change the fact that Divine was dead.

As the fact finally sinks in, Aki stands there in utter bewilderment. Half of the duel she only vaguely remembers - the mask, the fury and the cold and calculating destruction of her alter ego.

A sadistic smile twisting her face.

Wild, tornado like winds that blew away the hall of mirrors.

And a chill voice that rasped from her throat, as jagged and emotionless as the shattered fragments of unwinking silver on the ground.

Shaken, as though the memories are painful for her she looks round. Rua and Ruka are standing on the balcony - safe she notices wih a quick flash of relief. But the rest of the abandoned amusement park - destroyed. Chunks of rubble and destroyed buildings lie scattered across the dusty landscape, as the sunset light is turned into an almost bloody red by the raised motes. The red light glances off the metallic shards of glass on the ground and the light seems to gouge into her eyes like red lances.

They all seemed to be mocking her - the sad, crumbled, abandoned buildings, the destroyed ground, the ravaged earth. Even the smile on the clown head over the doorway of the building ahead seemed to have a sinister quality.

This is all her fault...

A feeling bubbles inside Aki, churning and frothing, burning like acid. More than a sense of regret for the destruction of the destroyed buildings, she keenly feels -

Divine is dead.

She knows it was necessary. She knows that the death of her mentor was nothing more than he deserved.

The man killed! He ruined the lives of countless people, children, he tortured, he manipulated, he killed! He intended to make her into even more of a monster! He fed off that darkness in her mind and heart like some kind of perverted and soulless vampire and in time he twisted her!

And yet her heart cries out. He was like kin. He knew the pain of being abandoned, cast out from society. He accepted, gave her a place when all other doors were shut to her. And with him gone it feels like she is dissolving. Like the first time she thought he was dead. Like some sort of lifeline had slipped through her grasp. Numb, Aki feels like the very atoms that define her are unravelling and returning to a finite and lonely existence.

He promised...

He promised to think for her...

He promised to love her... And without that hope, that thread of comfort, without the knowledge that she doesn't have to feel when people mock her, she is fading fast. Her limbs feel light like they too are crumbling to the red dust that clings to everything around her.

A choked sob, escapes her throat but no tears. It is the sound of a ravaged and beaten soul, screaming in pain.

And then, a sound from behind. She turns around, uncaring and almost unfeeling with all the pain and grief and loss in her heart -

Only to find Yusei striding across the landscape towards her. His steps are confident. They resonate like the very heartbeat of the earth.

He is not afraid.

She sees in a kind of detached wonder, how he approaches her, like he did the first time. Unafraid and uncowed, the eyes of a man that has been through much and uses the pain of his scars to drive him.

He stops in front of her, eyes that are on the opposite side of the spectrum gazing into hers. There are no words. But he sees, the twisted, wounded animal keening in her mind, the rage and sorrow flooding her eyes, the sheer fire of them drying her tears. And though he says nothing, though his face remains expressionless, those blue sapphires make her a promise.

Not a promise of dependence that had bound her to Divine, but a promise of heartfelt desire to make her stronger. To give her the strength to make her own. To make her strong and whole again.

Aki falls into him, face burrowed into his broad chest. She needs - craves what he makes her feel. She wants to feel the bond that he says she has with him. With them all. And finally, the tears come. They pour like a hot flood into his black shirt, but he seems to soak it up, seems to wipe away their existence.

And when his arms come round her, when they envelope her in a shroud of warmth, her knees fail her and she collapses into this unexpected anchor of her fragile life. She finally feels that she is complete.

As if those strong yet gentle brown hands, worn by labour and so good at repairing, have gently taking in the threads of her unstable existence and woven them back tenderly together.

Sooooo...? Like it? Love it? You are MORE than welcome to review. Or even better, review AND leave a sugestion! :D ONLY CONTRUCTIVE CRITICISM WELCOME 


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